


Miles from where you are

by smaragdbird



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-27
Updated: 2010-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/pseuds/smaragdbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Postcards, even when they come from all around the world, are not an acceptable substitute for having the person that writes said postcards actually there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miles from where you are

The first postcard came a few days after every tv and radio channel and every newspaper had covered the military attack on Xavier’s school.

  
Remy had also picked a seemingly unrelated mutant attack on a police squad in Boston, a few unusual storms at the Canadian border and the destruction of the Alkali Lake Dam.

  
The most important news of course, had been the death of Colonel William Stryker.

  
He had never been as drunk as on the night were the news had announced his death. Part of it had been joy, part of it an attempt to drown the memmories Stryker’s name brought up for once and for all and another part of it had been worry.

  
There had been no news from anyone, not from Logan or John or anyone else.

  
Then the postcard came.

To see John's familiar scrawl reassured Remy as long as it took for him to drive on Logan's former motorcycle (not that he had ever told Logan that he had it) to the mansion and demand a detailed retell of what had happened.

  
It felt like a punch in the stomach to find out that Jean was dead, to see Logan's grief stricken face and Bobby alternating between staring in Remy's direction and not meeting his eyes when Remy looked back.

  
The mansion itself was still ravaged with hallways full of broken glass and bloodstains in places where none should be.

  
Ororo and Logan told him what had happened between the attack on the mansion and Jean's death at Alkali Lake but neither of them mentioned John and he didn't manage to corner Bobby before he left the mansion again.

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Remy hid his relief behind a smirk when the second postcard found its way to him a few weeks later. It wasn't signed just like the last one hadn't been but then Remy didn't need a name to know that John had written it.

True to his words John's next card came only a few days later.

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"You're completely missing the fact that I probably will never get to see this movie." Remy told the card dryly if you could call it that. Actually it was less of a card and more a flyer with piece of white paper glued to it's back.

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Remy made a disgusted face. He didn't like Asian cuisine at all and John knew that better than anyone.

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Yeah, John missed him so much that instead of coming back to New Orleans when he had found living in the mansion unbearabale anymore, he had joined Magneto and Mystique, two of the world's most wanted, on a journey around the world.

  
On the other hand he got irregularly arriving postcards from all around the world which was likely more than anyone else got from John these days.

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Remy opened his letterbox to find a photo there.

To his credit he didn't hurry upstairs but very calmly walked the stairs and opened his door. For all his other flaws John was quite a decent cook.

  
"Thought you would never show up." John told him from the open kitchen door as if they had last seen each other this morning and not nearly a year ago.

  
"And missing out your culinary skills?" Remy smirked and leaned against the doorframe, watching John cook. He was still as tall as he had been last year but his skin was darker, no doubt from the visits in Kenya and Korea and where else he had been and hishair was now long enough that John had pulled it into a ponytail so it wouldn't bother him.

  
"Did you lose your baggage on the plane?" Remy asked because the faded jeans and the white t-shirt John were wearing absolutely belonged to him.  
"No, but I had to wash my clothes." John told him matter-of-factly.

  
"Make yourself at home." Remy said dryly.

  
"Hey, I'm cooking for you, am I not?" John replied indignantly.

  
Remy chuckled and stepped into the room to stand behind John and wrap his arms around his waist.

  
"Stop that. I'm trying to cook here."

  
"Stop what?" Remy asked and nuzzled John's neck: "Molesting you won't make the food cook slower."

  
"No, but it will get burnt."

  
"Maybe I like burnt."

  
"No, you don't." John grinned and pushed Remy away: "You can set the table."

  
"When did I let you take over my flat?" Remy asked.

  
"When you gave me the keys." John deadpanned.

 

John stayed three days and a week after he had left the next postcard came.

 

Remy never mentioned to anyone that he was in contact with John when he was at the mansion although he was fairly sure that Xavier and Logan knew.

 

Xavier because he had this annoying habit of walking through other people's minds and Logan because of his sense of smell. Neither of them ever said anything to Remy.

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Remy remembered reading about the mutant attack on a family in Boston and called Logan to get the details on that incident that Logan had only mentioned in passing the first time Remy had asked him.

  
No one had been seriously injured back then but Remy doubted that John would have cared if there had been fatalities. He wondered if this had been the catalyst for the events that ended with John joining the Brotherhood.

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The next postcards came from Europe again. First one from Milan, Italy  


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And another one from Coimbra, Portugal.  


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The third was from Dublin, Ireland ad Remy sincerely hoped that John wouldn't gush about old books for the rest of his life.  


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He spent Christmas at the mansion, alternatively flirted with Ororo and Logan or with Rogue, especially when Bobby stood right next to her.

 

Breaking John's heart hadn't exactly raised Remy's opinion of Bobby and as John's oldest friend he had the right to exact a bit of revenge on Bobby.

  
When he came back home a card from John waited for him, this time from Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Spending Mardi Gras with John again like they used to before John went of with the Brotherhood? Yes, Remy would like that, too. A bit more actually than he would even admit to himself.

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Then March came and with it finally another card from John. With severely disappointing news.

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"You know, John, it would be easier for me to answer your question if you had a fucking return address." Remy was in a bad mood. He had lost two rounds of poker today and only barely pulled himself away from a disaster by winning the third round.

  
Emma had called to sing her own praise about her perfect little life, had pitied poor Scott for still not being over the death of his girlfriend, which made Remy remember why he hadn't liked Emma during their time on Three Miles Island: she lacked the ability to be tactful, and then had had the audacity to ask if he had finally found someone.

  
The news from the mutant grapevine that Creed had come back from the dead would have been the icing on the cake if John's card hadn't arrived today. Because if Magneto only kept his little group in Europe to search for Pietro then Remy would kick his ass. He knew Pietro, they had been fellow prisoners in Stryker's little corner of Hell and he knew that instead of staying at the mansion, Pietro had gone to find his twin sister again.

  
Remy also knew that they weren't in Europe at the moment but in South America.

  
Magneto, he decided that night, was an idiot of epic proportions but then, what else could he expect from a man that employed people like Creed?

 

Things like that showed why Remy had never chosen to fight for either Xavier or Magneto.

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"And where we?" Remy wondered out loud: "Mortal enemies?" But he had to admit that the word "friends" had never really covered all of the tangled and ever changing aspects of his and John's relationship.

  
Remy felt an irrational stab of jealousy at the mention of this Dominik, though. As if this wasn't the worst moment to become possessive over a boy who currently walked around on the other side of the Earth.

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The attack on the Pertona Towers in Kuala Lumpur was the first time since the Ellis Island incident that the Brotherhood became a major topic in the media again. The X-Men had arrived merely half an hour after the attack and without them the body count would have been much higher so for once the events didn't turn into another mutant witch hunt.

  
At first it looked like a random attack but when the details became known...Ororo told him that she couldn't help but sympathise with them.

 

Sure, a few hundred people had died but what had been done there was so disgusting and sickening that Remy had never been able to read past the first lines:

  
Human Experiments.

  
Not like Stryker, not in their goal at the very least. He had done the experiments to control mutants, to use them as weapons and ultimatively to annihilate them but in Malaysia they had experimented with mutants to remove their abilities on a individual basis, physically, chemically and genetically.

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For a long time he heard nothing from John, which wasn't unexpected. After the attention they had raised in Malaysia and everywhere else, the Brotherhood had to lay low. As far as Remy was concerned no news was good news because it meant that John hadn't been caught. On the other hand it could also mean that he was held in a secret prison somewhere.

  
The aftermath of Malaysia had re-awakened Remy's nightmares of being back on Three Miles Island, back in Stryker's and Creed's hands, each night reliving another day of the two years where they had ripped him apart.

  
The longer John kept his silence the more Remy dreamed about John being with him on Three Miles Island. In his dreams the noises around him were no longer Janos howling against the bars or Emma curled on the floor, crying for her sister. Sean didn't whisper his prayers to God to keep his little daughter safe anymore and Pietro never threw insults at the guards until they beat him unconscious. There was no Toad anymore who cracked bad jokes and made lame puns as if it was going out of fashion and Henry didn't etch formuals into the floor with his fingernails.

  
All Remy heard in his dreams anymore was John screaming while Stryker experimented on him or when Creed...The first time Remy had dreamed about that he had only managed to roll over before he had thrown up on the floor.

  
On that night he had contemplated asking Xavier but as soon as he had calmed down, he told himself that this was just his imagination that was overreacting and that John was fine.

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The beginning of August finally proved him right.

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Remy had been tempted to throw the card away as soon as he had read it.

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"And you just have to rub that in my face, don't you?" Remy glared at the card and instead of pining it to the wall like the others he dropped it together with the last card into a drawer.

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And another one for the drawer. although Remy wondered if John called Magneto and Mystique "Erik" and "Stiques" in real life, too or if that was only a precaution like not signing them in case anyone else read the card.

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The door was opened, John walked inside and dropped his bag on the floor.

 

Remy took a short look at John, who looked exactly like someone who just had two relaxing months in Australia and Hawaii, and decided not to move from his very comfortable position on the couch.

  
"Where's your precious friend?" Remy asked in a mordant tone as soon as John came into the room.

  
"Dom's visiting some friends in Chicago." John shot him a curious look: "Why?"

  
"From your cards I would think you two were attached at the hip." John laughed at that.

  
"We both have other friends, too, evidently, or I wouldn't be here, would I? And it's not like we haven't been together 24/7 for the last months."

  
"Did he like Australia?" Remy added rather coolly.

  
 "Yeah." John frowned at him: "Although, but don't tell Mags that I said this, we spent most of the time we had between the beach and next best club. You know, me and Dom, we just clicked. I mean we just understand each other. Especially compared to the hard start Bobby and I had."

  
"How sweet." Remy remarked in a mordant tone: A match made in heaven, hm?"

  
"Fuck this." John replied angrily: "I already got a lecture from Stiques, I don't need the same shit from you."

  
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Remy said coldly. In a way it was true because he'd bet his arguments against the relationship between Dominik and John were vastly different than the ones Mystique had used.

  
"I know that it was foolish and dangerous to stay in Australia that long, okay? But I'm here, I'm fine. Nothing happened. I can take care of myself and so can Dom. You need to realise that I'm not some stupid kid." John yelled, grabbed his bag and slammed the door shut behind him.

  
Very different arguments, indeed.

Well, he supposed that he deserved this.

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After John's outbreak the last time Remy felt bit guilty at feeling relief that Dominik wouldn't be around John as much as before anymore. On the one hand it could mean that John would rather go to Chicago the next time he was in the US but on the other hand he still sent Remy cards and after the last one he had returned to his usual ironic tone, so maybe he would come back to New Orleans nonetheless.

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Somehow that simply statement made Remy frown. Sentimentalities weren't John's thing and it made him wonder what had happened in Israel that John would sent him a card like this.

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Remy was tempted to call Xavier and persuade him to share some of that blackmail material. If only to make John stay a bit longer the next time he came by.

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"I believe you proposed a little vacation to Paris in one of your cards?" Remy smirked at John. They sat on the roof, a bottle of New Orleans' best bourbon between them.

  
"I also said "when all this is over" and not "as soon as we see each other again." "John pointed out.

  
"That's your of saying that you're leaving tomorrow."

  
"The day after tomorrow." John corrected him.

  
"Marry me." Remy said suddenly to John.

  
"You’re drunk." John replied but he was smiling.

  
"Only a little."

  
"I’m not going to marry you." John said: ‘There’s nothing keeping us together not even sex.’

  
"People marry for a lot less." Remy pointed out: "And we could work on the sex angle. I bet we would have fantastic, mindblowing sex." Maybe he was more than a little drunk.

  
"You want to have sex with me?" John asked.

  
"Everyone with eyes in their skull should want to have sex with you." Remy slurred and yeah, he was definitely drunk. And a lot more than a bit drunk, too. He leaned forward to press his lips against John's but John pulled away, leapt to his feet and left with a last, pained look at him.

  
Remy didn't hear from John again for a long time.

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"John!"

  
"Remy?" John sounded like he really hadn't thought he would find Remy in their secret, mutant resistance camp. As if there was a chance that the mutant grapevine would miss out the meeting place of the Brotherhood, especially with its hundreds of members.

  
"What are you doing here?"

  
"I wanted to see you. We both know that something major is going to happen soon and that I won't take part in it." In the distance Remy could see Magneto speaking to Creed and Toad. He really didn't want to meet either of them.

  
"So in case anything goes wrong you wanted to say goodbye to me?" John saod flippantly.

  
"So to speak. I paid Logan a visit, too in case you're wondering." Remy replied easily. And even though John had rejected him last time Remy seized this last chance and kissed John again. And for a a brief moment he felt John answer the kiss until John's hand on his chest gently pushed him away.

  
"Remy...." John whispered roughly. They were still so close that Remy could feel the words against his lips.

  
"Why did you stop?"

  
"I'm sorry...I can't..." John pulled away entirely.

  
"I understand. I thought he was just a rebound but I should have known better." Remy said half to John and half to himself.

  
"Who are you talking about?"

  
"Dominik of course."

  
"Dom and I are just friends. The idea itself is..." John made a disgusted face.

  
"Then why?" Remy wanted to know.

  
"Bobby." John sounded so self-evident and pained at the same time that it broke Remy a little because the thing between Bobby and John had ended over three years ago.

  
"I still love him." John sounded so desperately helpless but there was nothing Remy could do.

  
"You should go." John told more collectedly.

  
"Yes, I should." Remy agreed.

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The last one came from San Francisco, the post mark showed that John had written it on the same day the Brotherhood had attacked Alcatraz.  



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